Texas coach Mack Brown announces resignation

AUSTIN – Mack Brown, who reinvigorated Texas’ football program, won a national title and narrowly missed another before his program entered a decline he couldn’t correct, announced Saturday he is resigning as the Longhorns’ coach after 16 seasons.

Brown, whose status had been uncertain for days, informed school president Bill Powers and athletic director Steve Patterson of his decision on Saturday. His last game with the Longhorns will be against Oregon in the Valero Alamo Bowl on Dec. 30.

“It’s been a wonderful ride,” Brown said in a statement released by the school. “Now, the program is again being pulled in different directions, and I think the time is right for a change.”

Speculation about the two-time national coach of the year’s departure had been growing since Sept. 7, when UT suffered a blowout loss to BYU. Brown had billed this season as the Longhorns’ chance to return to their glory days of the early 2000s. Instead they went 8-4, making Brown the first UT coach ever to suffer at least four losses in four consecutive seasons.

Multiple media outlets reported on Tuesday that Brown was preparing to step down. On Thursday in San Antonio, he insisted he wouldn’t make an announcement about his future until he met with Powers and Patterson.

That meeting took place on Friday, and a UT official confirmed Brown expressed a desire to keep his job. But by Saturday evening, he’d changed his mind.

“I sincerely want (UT) to get back to the top and that’s why I am stepping down after the bowl game,” Brown said. “I hope with some new energy, we can get this thing rolling again.”

Brown, 62, is being paid $5.4 million this season and was under contract through 2020. His deal called for a $2.75 million buyout if he was terminated this year, but sources said he and the school negotiated a settlement that will pay him a different amount in a new role at the school.

The details of that agreement were not immediately available Saturday.

Powers, one of Brown’s most ardent longtime supporters, said he’s “excited for the future and the opportunity to work with him in a new capacity for the years to come.”

“He is an unbelievable resource for us and will always be a valuable member of the Longhorn community,” Powers said.

Patterson said he knew “(Brown’s) decision weighed heavily on him.”

“He’s been a tremendous coach, mentor, leader and ambassador for our university and our student-athletes,” Patterson said. “He is truly a college football legend.”

Brown leaves UT with a record of 158-47, only nine victories shy of the school record held by his late mentor and confidant, Darrell Royal. Like Royal, Brown used folksy charm to win over alumni, players and high school coaches all over the state, and led UT to an extended period of national prominence.

From 2000-09, Brown oversaw a program that averaged a national-best 11 victories per year, had seven top-10 finishes, played in four Bowl Championship Series games and won its first national championship since 1970. That success led to UT becoming the country’s richest athletic department, replete with sparkling facilities nothing like the sagging ones that existed before Brown’s arrival.

But after a school-record 12 consecutive bowl berths and nine straight 10-victory seasons, Brown’s colossus imploded in 2010. The Longhorns lost to Alabama in the BCS title game that January, and in the fall endured a stunning 5-7 disaster that led to Brown overhauling his coaching staff.

Although they showed modest progress in 2011 and 2012, Brown’s teams never looked like realistic championship contenders again. This year, a roster loaded with highly praised talent was blown out by at least 19 points four times.

Still, Brown’s impact on UT is undeniable. Before he arrived in December 1997, the Longhorns had gone 14 years without finishing in the top 10, and had fallen well behind A&M as the state’s premier program. Brown’s predecessor, John Mackovic, went 4-7 in his final year and his relationship with many key alumni was nonexistent.

Brown, a coach’s son from Cookeville, Tenn., who played at Florida State and was coming off back-to-back top-10 finishes as head coach at North Carolina, changed things immediately. Before his introductory press conference, at Royal’s suggestion he reached out to influential UT donor Joe Jamail and Eddie Joseph, the executive vice president of the Texas high school coaches’ association.

Over the next several weeks he blew crowds away with speaking engagements throughout the state. Even Royal was impressed.

“As far as public relations goes,” Royal said, “Mack Brown has no equal.”

One of Brown’s earliest converts was UT running back Ricky Williams, who was considering the idea of turning pro when Brown arrived. But he returned for his senior year in 1998, winning the Heisman Trophy and leading UT to a Cotton Bowl victory over Mississippi State.

Brown soon proved his pitch to Williams was no fluke. Year after year, he hauled in some of the most vaunted recruiting classes in the nation. Much of that talent lived up to the hype. During his UT tenure, Brown coached 52 All-Americans, 66 first-team All-Big 12 selections, and 58 NFL draft picks.

Former UT athletic director DeLoss Dodds called Brown “the best player coach (he’d) ever been around.”

But Brown admitted the job could be daunting. He often told the story of one of his earliest conversations with Royal, in which the old coach told him the best part of Brown’s job was that “20 million people care about Texas football.” Brown then asked him to name the worst part.

“Twenty million people care about Texas football,” Royal answered.

At times, that pressure got to him. Although UT won plenty of games during his first six years in Austin, he was criticized for not winning the biggest ones, and the barbs bothered him. Before the 2004 season, he made up his mind to be happier.

“I wasn’t enjoying the wins enough, and I was dying after the losses,” Brown said. “I think I just grew up a little.”

His team matured, too. Behind a revelation of a quarterback named Vince Young, the Longhorns went to the Rose Bowl, won 11 games and finished fifth in the country in 2004. The next year, they won the national title with a classic rally against No. 1 Southern California. For Brown, it was vindication. But two veteran colleagues, Penn State’s Joe Paterno and Florida State’s Bobby Bowden, warned him that a championship came with a cost, too.

Brown never won another, but came close. In 2008, the Longhorns were kept out of the title game by just a fraction of a point in the BCS standings, and in the 2009 season they made it there, but lost to Alabama.

In the first quarter of that game, star quarterback Colt McCoy injured his shoulder and was unable to return. Still, UT had the ball trailing by three points with less than four minutes left, and their hopes of a title weren’t dashed until Garrett Gilbert was sacked and fumbled the ball away.

The defeat devastated Brown.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever taken a loss as hard,” Brown said later. “I don’t think I did a good job of coming back out of it and getting a spark and getting the energy back to where I needed it to be, and I didn’t realize it. I just pouted for a while.”

That, at least in part, led to everything crumbling in 2010. And although UT showed occasional signs of progress since then, the Longhorns never re-established themselves as the power they were before. Not only had they fallen out of the national picture, they also began to slip behind A&M and Baylor in the state they once ruled.

Asked repeatedly about his future in recent years, Brown always said he was still enjoying his job, and that he was determined to fix the program. But in the end, some of the first words he spoke as UT’s head coach still proved relevant.

“I want to win it more than any fan,” Brown said the day he was introduced in Austin 1997. “I’m going to put more into it than any fan. I’m going to put more of my life into it than any fan. I’m going to have more pressure than any fan. … You can’t have as much fun unless you’re winning.”